Jamie123

I think we are very similar in the Church of England to what Vort describes: a "Stake" has always sounded to me very much like a "diocese" - a Stake President being roughly equivalent to an diocesan bishop (the main difference being that the bishop is a full-time paid cleric). I don't think many Anglicans give much of a stuff about their diocese, and probably don't even know the name of their bishop; their focus is mainly on their "parish" (similar to a ward/branch) and its local leadership. Whenever the diocese is mentioned, it is usually by people on church committees, grumbling about how the diocese is refusing to pay for the new roof, or is demanding a greater "parish share" (the portion of tithes paid by the parish to help support the diocese). Having said that, there are certain things that local church leaders are not authorised to do. For example confirmations, ordinations, the inductions of new local leaders have to be performed by a bishop. On those occasions a bishop will visit the parish church and the kids will snicker about his funny hat However, the bishop who comes to do these things will probably not be the actual bishop of the diocese; each diocese has a number of so-called "suffragan" bishops who attend to the daily grind of bishoping. (Sometimes they have notional "sees"; for example the Bishop of Kingston is a suffragan to the diocesan Bishop of Southwark, but others are regular parish priests authorized to "step in" as bishops when the need arises.) Possibly they could be compared with a Stake President's counsellors - but I'm not sure about that

If I remember rightly, the Simpsons' "add-ons" were: ...say It glowed (Bart: "Like a Light Bulb!" Homer: "Bart!!") ...reindeer games (Bart: "Like Strip Poker!" Homer: "I'm warning you!") ...Santa came to say (Marge: "Take it away Homie!" Homer (sings solo): "Rudolph get your nose over here, so you can guide my sleigh to...er...day" Patty and Selma: "Groan!") ...down in history (Bart: "Like Attila the Hu.....uuuugh". Homer starts strangling him.) My daughter and I always sing "Attila the Hun" at the end, though my wife always tries to drown us out with "George Washington". (I think "Attila the Hun" scans better)

Notwithstanding what I said before, I now ALWAYS see the pig. Thanks Vort. Thanks a lot!! LOL

Last night I got an early Christmas present from my parents-in-law: a phone/tablet "bundle", to replace the Apple I-phone I accidentally dropped in coffee last month. The phone and tablet are both Android based (not Apple) and I have had bad experiences with Android before - but both of these gizmos seem to work well and I'm very pleased and happy. The first thing I looked up on the tablet was the debate about Jojobag's "pig". I showed it to my wife but she wasn't impressed and refused to accept it looked like anything other than a kitten. (Women, ey?) She in return showed me this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiSn2JuDQSc on her own tablet. Enjoy :)

If I half close my eyes I can just about see it as a pig - but only for a split second at a time. Almost immediately the kitten returns.

Interesting: maybe they'll make another show about her husband Noah

Are you sure she wasn't trying to do an impression of the Cookie Monster from Sesame Street? Another thing: when you've finished your Christmas pudding, and are totally stuffed beyond belief, the next indispensable thing is to listen to the Queen on TV at 3pm.You don't really pay any attention to what she says, but her voice is soothing and Christmassy and helps your digestion. At the end of her message they play the National Anthem, and you feel like you ought to stand up but decide not to. Then you fall asleep, till you are woken up by kids trying to land their new radio controlled helicopters on your face. But you don't mind - it's Christmas after all! * mean the Queen - not the band Queen - though there's nothing wrong with listening to Queen on Christmas day. When I was 15 I got A Night at the Opera for Christmas, which I had asked for because I knew it had Bohemian Rhapsody on it, and I listened to it almost non-stop all that day.(The cat was sick all over the couch that Christmas, though I don't think that had anything to do with either Queen or the Queen.)

The indispensable tastes of Christmas: Mince piesChicken or turkey, roasted with bacon, sausages and stuffing. Over cooked, with lots of gravy poured over itOh - and don't forget the roasted potatoes and parsnipsOr the Brussels sprouts (even if you hate them, Christmas isn't Christmas without them)Christmas pudding - with cream or brandy butterMulled wine (though I don't suppose many active LDS would have this)Nuts (hazelnuts, walnuts, brazils, almonds etc...)My American wife does not agree. She cannot stand Christmas pudding, or mulled wine, or Brussels sprouts, She doesn't go for nuts, or mince pies. Or parsnips. Neither does she like the chicken/turkey overcooked. For her Christmas is all about cookies. Cookies? What is it with cookies? *Sigh*

How do you know that the 18/19/20-year-old "apostate" ever experienced "the truth"? I'm sure many 12-year-old kids are marched through baptism without any real understanding or belief, and only discover later that they have doubts. His own actual conversion (or otherwise) could still be in the future! (And in case you think that's ignorance talking, I remember from my own days as an investigator a member giving a talk about how the Church meant nothing to him at all until he was already some way up the priesthood ladder.) Maybe your average ex-Mormon is more likely to be sinful than a regular non-member, maybe not, but either way would it not it be far better to judge individuals on their own actions? Firstly I'm not talking about inactive Mormons - I'm talking about ex-Mormons who have left the church but have maintained their moral standards, and are in good ecclesiastical standing elsewhere. Perhaps there are few such people - I don't know. But would it not be better to expel a student based on his/her moral depravity than on whether or not they belong to a certain demographic? This is a false dichotomy. You're assuming that allowing ex-Mormons to remain at BYU would necessarily entail lowering the honour standards to the level you say ex-Mormons would wish them to be. Why not require the same high moral standards from Mormons and ex-Mormons alike, and only bring in discipline/expulsion when these standards are not met? If by "saints" you mean "latter day saints" this is quite clearly not the policy - as is evident from the case of beefche.

I totally agree that as a private church-sponsored institution, BYU can make and enforce any rules it wants. (Within reason of course - the alleged former policy of withholding academic credit from departing homosexual students until they had submitted to electric "degayification" could be open to question.) But consider two students: Student A is a non-LDS Christian. He has an acceptable reference from his minister, and has agreed to live by the Mormon lifestyle during his time at BYU. Student B is a former Mormon who still abides by all the moral standards of Mormonism, but who found (at some point while at BYU) that he could no longer believe that the Church is true. He applied for name removal and has now joined a different church. Both are living the same moral standards. Neither believes that the LDS church is true. Yet A is considered worthy to be a BYU student and B is not. Why? What is the difference between them?

This from the Wikipedia page on EO13603:

"Monies" (plural of "money"). This follows the same rule as monkey/monkies, but you can't have "a money" the same way that you can have "a monkey" can you? The same thing is true with "water" and "waters", but somehow that doesn't bother me - probably because it appears in the Bible. The word "monies" has always looked and sounded naff to me.

I've read about that: Greek has the letter "theta" which is supposed to make the same sound as the modern English "th" but Latin has no equivalent and the first printing presses were designed to print Latin. It had supposedly not yet occurred to anyone to use "TH" to represent the "thorn" rune. Until recently that puzzled because "TH" does sometimes appear in Latin : like "thema" (horoscope) and "theatrum" (theatre), but Ilately discovered that the T and H in those words would originally have been sounded separately: t'heatrum or t'hema. But I'm still not totally convinced because Latin has many borrow-words from Greek in which theta has become "TH": like "theologos" (theologian) or the name of the Roman emperor Theodosius. Maybe in Classical times the Greeks would have pronounced theta as "t'h" but it seems unlikely: the "th" sound comes so natural that it's hard to believe no one in those days used it.

I always pronounced Pyrrhic to rhyme with "lyric" - maybe I've been saying it wrong all these years. It wouldn't be the first time: for years I only encountered the word "paradigm" in print, and had I ever been called upon to say it I would have probably said something like "para-dijum". A colleague of mine was surprised when I told him how Persephone was pronounced (he had always imagined it was "Persi-fone"). My father tells me that when he was young he used to talk about "Jung" (as in Carl Jung, but pronounced with a hard J) and people would have no clue what he was talking about. On the other hand, what about "quixotic"? For years I imagined that was pronounced "Kee-hotic" (I knew how "Don Quixote" should be pronounced because of the song by Nik Kershaw). I was surprised later to learn that it was actually "quicks-otic". P.S. Another word is "Vigenère". About 3 years ago I was called upon to teach cryptography - a subject I then knew almost nothing about, so I had to bury myself in books for a few months learning about one-time pads, block ciphers and elliptic curves. The first year I taught the class I had no idea that Vigenère is pronounced "vision-air", so I told the students all about the "vig-ner-aye" cipher. Luckily none of them knew how it was pronounced either so I got away with it!

Another thing about the KJV is that when a word is written in italics like this it does not mean that reader should stress the word. It means (so I understand) that the word was inserted by the translator and does not appear in the original Greek/Hebrew.

You may be a long way from where God wants you to end up, but does that mean you are not where He wants you to be now?

You're not seriously telling me that Grumpy Bear is "grouchy and cantankerous" by the standards of anyone other than the Care Bears? Grouchy Smurf would be more of a warning!

I totally agree. I think we all admire Martin Luther King - even though he was (i) a serial adulterer, and (ii) an academic cheat. Philip Yancey paints a very warts-and-all picture of him in his book Soul Survivor but still explains why he finds King an inspiration in his life. I've done enough things "worthy of disgust and rejection" myself over the years without worrying about what other people might or might not have done. Though that doesn't always stop me feeling cross and judgmental though...

One I heard about once is that the Smithsonian uses the Book of Mormon as a reference on pre-Columbian America. This is obviously untrue (if it were true then the Smithsonian would be a bastion of Mormonism, which it isn't) but whether this idea was ever seriously believed by Church members I don't know.

You mean Mormons *don't* try to pass themselves off as Amish? Seriously though I didn't spot that in the OP (hangs head in shame! )

"Mormon" is another word for "Amish" "Mormon" is another word for "Quaker" All Mormons are Freemasons Mormons are banned from being Freemasons Mormon men can have as many wives as they like but cannot drink Coca Cola Mormons believe that God communicates with the saints using tachyons Sir Richard Branson is a Mormon (I actually believed this for some time before I looked into it)

Ditto. I guess I'm not that phallically minded! A thread starts with Downton Abbey....and now it's about the symbolism of sand worms! Interesting :)

The last season has just finished here. What happens at the end is that Lady Mary tries to...... [only joking - no spoilers here!] The story's not quite over yet though - the upcoming Christmas episode will be the series finale. On the earlier discussion of normalizing homosexuality: you're right Thomas is not a nice man, but his not-niceness is never really linked with his being gay. The fact that writers are now allowed to create gay villains without being screamed at for homophobia shows how normalized homosexuality has become. Coronation Street is another case in point: there are no fewer than four gay characters: two of them, Billy and Sophie, are portrayed Christians (Billy is even an Anglican priest, though his bishop doesn't approve), Todd is an underhand conniving backstabber (similar to Thomas in DA) and only Sean really fits the classic, camp "gay-best-friend" image. P.S. I've just been thinking - its a few years since I last read it, but (if I remember rightly) in the original novel version of Dune the only homosexual character is the loathsome Baron Harkonenn - the worst villain! (And no one could ever accuse that of being normalizing!) This was of course in the mid-1960s, but I can't remember if there is any reference to his being gay in the David Lynch movie of 1984. Can anyone remember?

I find it difficult to make sense of this argument because they both seem to be talking about wealth owned (capital) rather than wealth produced (profit). The young lady says that 1% of the population owns over 50% of the wealth. (I don't know whether this is true or not, but no one seems to object to the figure.) Cavuto retorts that the entire 50% wealth of the 1% would not pay for Medicaid for 3 years, which is clearly not sustainable. But this would mean that if the entire country's wealth were put into Medicaid, it would only last 6 years - which is not sustainable either! In Britain we have had the National Health Service since 1948. I grew up with it, and I've always considered the NHS as much a part of the state apparatus as the army or the police*. That is 67 years, which was not funded by a single mass confiscation of wealth from the rich, but by taxation of wealth produced during that period. Produced by rich and poor alike - but yes, mostly by the rich because (let's face it) they have more to spare! Cavuto may have come over as having aced the argument, and the girl may have come over as an "airhead", but as neither has really considered the relevant facts, neither has made a valid point. P.S. OK I take that back - he does make one valid point which is that the rich, if taxed too much for their liking will either leave the country or else squirrel their money somewhere were the IRS can't touch it. A lot of this "tax avoidance" goes on here in the UK. * And if you're about to knock me in the dirt and stamp on my head for daring to think that, I'd suggest this has less to do with the superiority of your own arguments than the fact that you grew up with a different set of assumptions.

My wife (who is American) thinks it very strange that British people don't fly the Union Jack* outside their houses the way Americans fly "Ol' Glory". The reason is of course that our national flag has been hijacked by far right: anyone who flaunts it in public is presumed to be a racist skinhead only one step away from wearing a white conical hood with eye-holes. Another two words that have been hijacked are "hacker" and "troll". A hacker used to be a person who was uncannily good at computer programming. Such people would get top marks in computing assignments but struggle to pass any of their other exams (mostly from sitting up all night playing D&D), get their degrees with the lowest possible grades and go on to get highly paid jobs in the software industry. Nowadays though, a "hacker" is someone who attempts to breach firewall security to get their hands on vital financial information. And a "troll" was originally someone who posted silly messages on bulletin boards in order to enjoy the angry responses of people clueless enough to take them seriously: a somewhat naughty but generally harmless activity. Nowadays a "troll" is someone who defaces obituary websites with obscenities and otherwise engages in "cyber bullying". And another thing (this rant is getting as long as Vort's) The word "Cyber" comes from the Greek "Kybernisi" which means controlling/guiding/governing. It's where we get "cybernetics" - which is the science of control systems (natural and artificial). It has nothing inherently to do with the Internet. Nowadays "cyber" has become a synonym for "electronic" or "computer-related" - usually in relation to crime or crime prevention (e.g. "cyber terrorism", "cyber security" etc.) I think this may be partly down to the "Cyber Men" in Doctor Who. *Well OK then the Union "Flag" you annoying pedant!